ArchbishopElector

An Archbishop-Elector, also written ArchbishopElector, was a high-ranking bishop who also held secular territorial authority within the Holy Roman Empire and was entitled to participate in the imperial election as a prince-elector. The office reflects the hybrid nature of medieval governance, combining ecclesiastical leadership with princely jurisdiction within a prince-archbishopric or archbishopric.

Under the Golden Bull of 1356, the empire formalized a College of Electors consisting of seven members who elected the Emperor. Three of these were ecclesiastical archbishops: Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. The remaining four were secular rulers: the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. Archbishop-Electors thus sat among the electors and had a voice in the selection of the Emperor and in the deliberations of the Imperial Diet.

The archbishoprics themselves were religious sees whose holders exercised temporal lordship over territories such as Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. As a class, archbishop-electors wielded significant influence in imperial politics, diplomacy, and church governance, in addition to their spiritual duties within their sees.

With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic era, the electoral privilege of archbishop-electors ended, and their secular territories were reorganized. Today, the term Archishop-Elector is used primarily in historical contexts to describe those archbishops who served as princes-electors within the empire.